politics

The last year has been a divisive one for our national political scene. But one uniting factor has been to turn a lot more of us into political junkies - talking, texting and tweeting about the latest moves in Congress or the White House as if they were episodes of "Game of Thrones."

Sometimes, though, it's nice to take a break from the fire hose of breaking updates and Twitter feeds and read an entire book. We asked some journalists who closely follow politics for their recommendations.

Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Grieco held a news conference Monday to confirm what many top backers already knew: He has abandoned his embattled bid for mayor.

"This year's proven to be exceptionally challenging for me, my family and the community, forcing all of us to deal with distractions and political attacks that have no purpose but to cloud my service to the people of Miami Beach," Grieco said.

Anthony Scaramucci is leaving his position as White House communications director — less than two weeks after being named for the job.

Scaramucci's departure followed the Monday-morning swearing in of the new White House chief of staff, retired Gen. John F. Kelly. Scaramucci had negotiated an unusual deal to report directly to the president rather than the chief of staff (Reince Priebus at the time).

About 20 people gathered on the steps of Key West City Hall Thursday afternoon to protest President Donald Trump's declaration that transgender people would no longer be allowed to serve in the military.

Mark Ebenhoch organized the protest. He spent 23 years in the Marines and he said local elected officials should take a public stand.

"You need to speak out and say, 'It's wrong.' Whether or not you voted for Trump makes no difference," Ebenhoch said. "It is wrong, period, and you need to say so. Because silence basically is condonement."

As lawmakers return to Washington to debate healthcare, they’ll have new ways of communicating with voters back home, through Facebook. But it’s not yet clear how the social media giant’s new tools could affect the political conversation.

President Trump took to Twitter to question his predecessor's judgment and actions — at the end of a week characterized by a steady drumbeat of questions about how and when the Obama administration chose to respond to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

"Why no action?," the president asked in the first of two tweets Saturday evening that suggested the Obama administration didn't do enough — and soon enough — to stop Russia last year.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus — who plays U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer on the HBO comedy Veep -- says that growing up in Washington, D.C., and later living in Los Angeles helped her prepare for the role:

"I think I understand the insular nature of Washington ... " she says. "There's an inside-the-Beltway mentality, not dissimilar from Hollywood — it feels like the only thing that matters. I think you're selling a brand of yourself."

James Patterson has a long history of collaboration. Of his dozens of books, the blockbuster thriller writer has written at least 50 — yes, five-zero — with the name of a co-author emblazoned on the cover.

Still, it's fair to say none of them has the resume of the fiction novice he's teaming up with now: former President Bill Clinton.

As their constituents protested in support of the Affordable Care Act in Miami Wednesday, two South Florida republicans provided crucial votes for a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, which narrowly passed the house 217-213.

Back in October, before his election, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump laid out a 100-Day Action Plan. He called it his "Contract With The American Voter." Among other things, it called for the full repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act, suspension of immigration from certain "terror-prone regions" and the lifting of "roadblocks" to let "infrastructure projects like the Keystone Pipeline move forward."